Speech perception deficits are commonly reported in dyslexia but longitudinal evidence that poor speech perception compromises learning to read is scant. We assessed the hypothesis that phonological skills, specifically phoneme awareness and RAN, mediate the relationship between speech perception and reading. We assessed longitudinal predictive…

Background: This study considers the role of early speech difficulties in literacy development, in the context of additional risk factors. Method: Children were identified with speech sound disorder (SSD) at the age of 3½ years, on the basis of performance on the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology. Their literacy skills were…

Background: Intervention studies for children at risk of dyslexia have typically been delivered preschool, and show short-term effects on letter knowledge and phoneme awareness, with little transfer to literacy. Methods: This randomised controlled trial evaluated the effectiveness of a reading and language intervention for 6-year-old children…

The home literacy environment (HLE) predicts language and reading development in typically developing children; relatively little is known about its association with literacy development in children at family-risk of dyslexia. We assessed the HLE at age 4 years, precursor literacy skills at age 5, and literacy outcomes at age 6, in a sample of…

There appears to be a close and probably causal relationship between early variations in phoneme skills and later reading skills in typically developing children, though the pattern in children with Down Syndrome is less clear. We present the results of a 2-year longitudinal study of 49 children with Down Syndrome (DS) and 61 typically developing…

The study investigated cognitive deficits associated with dyslexia and familial risk of dyslexia (endophenotypes) by comparing children from families with and without a history of dyslexia. Eighty-eight school-aged children were assessed on measures of phonology, language and rapid automatized naming. A series of regression analyses with family…

We report the associations between phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge in readers of alphasyllabic Kannada. Less fluent 9- to 12-year-olds with lower orthographic knowledge were at floor on phoneme tasks, but more fluent readers, with greater orthographic knowledge, showed significant phonemic awareness. Orthographic knowledge,…

Examined the phonological analysis and verbal working memory components of the sound categorization task and their relationships to reading skill differences. Children were tested on sound categorization by having them identify odd words in sequences. Sound categorization performance was sensitive to individual differences in speech perception…

Background: We evaluate the effectiveness of three theoretically motivated programmes for the teaching of reading to four-year-old children. Method: Four hundred and ten children, of pre-kindergarten age, in 20 UK Reception-year classrooms were divided into four matched groups and randomly assigned to one of three experimental teaching conditions,…